The 1988 Geffen album is a regular U.S. release. The 2011
Warner set is a limited edition of 2,000 copies, sold for $500 primarily
through the official site of the album. Consult with the separate
review of that set for more details about its availability.

Beetlejuice: (Danny Elfman) It's difficult to say
if filmmaker Tim Burton will ever be able to capture the magic of
Beetlejuice in another project, though he has certainly tried
many times through the years. Not only did Beetlejuice continue
to define the director's quirky sensibilities in the late 1980's, but it
also benefitted being a highly profitable honeymoon experience, being
the public's first major glimpse at the morbidly comic style truest to
his imaginative aesthetics. It also maintains fascination in that it
contained a simply marvelous cast of relative unknowns at the time, most
of whom would not only flourish in careers of their own, but continue to
be a part of Burton's normal cast ensemble in many subsequent projects.
The youth and vitality of both the cast and crew exudes its enthusiasm
for fantasy in every aspect of the 1988 film, including Danny Elfman's
score. Despite the Oingo Boingo lead's previous activities for the realm
of Pee-wee Herman and other wacky projects, Beetlejuice was his
broader introduction to mainstream audiences as an orchestral film score
composer, establishing an irresistible knack for creativity that would
astonish listeners and genuinely excite film music fans. Some veteran
film score collectors were actually quite horrified by Elfman's
ultra-dynamic, explosive sound at the time, rejecting him as an
untrained freak from the world of rock. The composer's classic score for
Batman the following year would squash all such concerns, though
while Elfman continued exploring the deeply troubled gothic sounds that
would culminate in the top notch scores for Edward Scissorhands
in 1991 and Sommersby in 1993, fans can look back at
Beetlejuice as a lovable bridge between Elfman's earliest and
zaniest orchestral styles and the morbidly brooding music to follow. The
plot of Beetlejuice was a perfect mould for this transition,
posing the death of a young couple at the outset and forcing them to
haunt their own New England mansion to expunge the next owners (who
happen to be New Yorkers with terrible instincts regarding interior
design). Together with the suicidal daughter of those owners, Elfman has
plenty of mysterious tragedy to muster in Beetlejuice. More than
countering that side of the score is the outright carnival atmosphere
created by Michael Keaton's title character. A "fixer" for the dead,
"Betelgeuse" harasses both the dead couple and those who moved into
their home with horrific pranks, requiring an extremely frenetic and
diverse score to match his personality.

The fact that Elfman met all the demands of the
Beetlejuice story with musical ideas so perfectly matched to
Burton's concepts should be no surprise. The two men had hit it off
instantly three years earlier with Pee-wee's Big Adventure,
sharing many of the same interests in unusually morbid concepts. More
interesting is how unique the Beetlejuice score still sounds two
decades later, and while Elfman has flirted with some parody and
outright comedy in the years since his scoring career transcended to the
A-list, he's never been able to resurrect the same outlandish
manipulations of the Warner Brothers sound that he had initially tested
in Pee-wee's Big Adventure. To describe the score in a technical
sense is doing a disservice to its ambient qualities; it really is a
difficult piece of music to describe with words because any such attempt
to brush past so many different ideas would neglect the intangibles that
draw them together. This wacky sense of free-wheeling fun was initially
a disaster in the recording process. The studio had brought in legendary
composer and conductor Lionel Newman to lead the orchestra, but the
performances of the main titles cue that he solicited from the players
completely lacked the offbeat pizzazz Elfman had tried to construct in
the composition. After a full day of poor rehearsals, Newman was fired
by Elfman (an extreme rarity for Newman and a point of lingering
discomfort for Elfman) and William Ross was hired as a replacement; like
Lennie Neihaus for Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Ross was able to
translate Elfman's quirkiness from page for the players and the rest of
the sessions were a success. It's not hard to understand why an icon
from yesteryear like Newman was a poor match for Elfman. No rhythm is
safe with the composer, who utilizes tangos, marches, waltzes, and even
Caribbean calypso movements in Beetlejuice. His thematic
development is also remarkably complex, with two distinct ideas created
for Betelgeuse himself, along with themes for Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder),
the Maitland couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis), and several minor
characters. Even a nasty sand worm in the world of the undead receives
its own recurring motif. No instrument is safe with Elfman either, who
compensates for a smaller ensemble by pulling every last bit of effort
from each performer. The piano is used in a somewhat perverse fashion,
taking the concept of the instrument's innocent role as representing
family values and giving it an almost demonic alternative life (though
technically, it's largely thumping away in the bass in a similar fashion
to Pee-wee's Big Adventure).

A typical orchestral ensemble for Beetlejuice,
though sparse, is joined by a lively percussion section, an array of
synthesizers, and vocal effects that range from solo boy to full adult
ensemble (some of which synthetic for spooky effect). Specialty
instruments, also possibly synthetic, include pipe organ, harpsichord,
pan pipes, and a variety of others. Each section of the orchestra is led
by unusual suspects, including tuba for brass and fiddle for strings.
Integral to the film as well is Harry Belafonte, whose classic "Day-O"
song is hilariously used during a dinner party possession scene and
"Jump in Line" highlights the finale of the film. Burton and Elfman
decided upon "Day-O" in the relatively late stages of production, that
scene in the film nearly dropped to meet studio demands. Its sound and
lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with the film's plot, but it works
wonders, and Elfman wisely incorporates a stanza of "Day-O" into the
opening bars of his "Main Titles" cue (though the film version of the
cue unfortunately removed Elfman's own, humorously layered performance
of the primary verse). Most casual viewers of Beetlejuice will
either remember the Belafonte songs (the film did help popularize him
with the younger generation to such an extent that pieces of "Day-O" are
used in stadiums across the world today to rouse crowds) or Elfman's
wild title theme, heard in full during the opening and closing credits,
with fragments sprinkled throughout. Representing Betelgeuse at his most
wickedly powerful, this theme is both playful and sinister, utilizing a
catchy, octave-repeating piano motif in its bass before building to a
cymbal-pounding march that heavily resembles Russian classicism. The
waltzes that emanate from this character theme are far more jaunty here
than they would be in the subsequent Batman finale, and Elfman
treats the more seductively sick side of Betelgeuse with a perverse and
memorable viola theme figuring heavily in the first half of the score.
In "Beetle-Snake" and "Showtime!," Elfman's verbose ideas for Betelgeuse
reach an almost horrific level of activity, taking the carnival
atmosphere to heart while hindering the listenability of the score on
album. The commercial CD arrangement from 1988 does, however, showcase
the less obvious haunts of the score. The softer variants of the
spirited "Travel Music" for the dead couple, often mingling with the
morbidly downbeat waltz for Winona Ryder's Lydia, create some of the
score's unsuspected highlights. A handful of solo vocal effects,
including those heard in "The Book!" and "Lydia Discovers," whether real
or synthesized, touch upon the classic gloom and doom of Elfman's gothic
side.

The outright highlight of the Beetlejuice score,
in film and on album, is "The Incantation," Elfman's first career stab
at the sound of "majesty" that opens with a curiously enticing duet for
piano and drums before erupting into a pipe organ crescendo of harmonic
resonance for the dead couple's forced resurrection. The use of the harp
and high synth choir in this cue, both so innocent in tone, are a
perfect balance for the menacing organ and bass drums that dominate.
There's even a hint of Jerry Goldsmith's "Blaster Beam" sound effect in
its upper ranges at times during "The Incantation." Other crescendos of
similar style exist in Beetlejuice, but none with the same
sustained power. While the smaller ensemble suits the personality of the
majority of this score quite well, "The Incantation" is easily a cue
that could sound infinitely more magnificent if re-recorded with a large
orchestra and choir, especially in the potential conveyed in its second
minute. As any listener will quickly notice, Elfman's music for the
score jumps around in style as often as the film requires, creating a
somewhat disjointed listening experience outside of the consistently
unpredictable instrumental employment that he uses as the glue for the
score. Together, these individual parts of Beetlejuice create a
whole that is nearly indescribable in its effectiveness. Parts of it are
pure magic while others are hideously unlistenable. The common
denominator, however, is the fact that a better score could not be
written for the story. For Elfman fans, while the composer's career
eventually strayed far from this outrageously haphazard creativity, the
basic ingredients that constitute his later intelligent and often
surprising constructs find many of their roots in Beetlejuice. As
a listening experience on album, the score fails to achieve top marks
because of a few factors. First, it's not only disjointed but it's also
short, amounting to under thirty minutes in running time in its primary
presentation and about forty minutes after assembling all of the very
short filler recordings. On the 1988 Geffen album, all of the major cues
are present and they're mostly in film order (the second Belafonte song
is switched with the "End Credits"). As mentioned before, the version of
the "Main Titles" on this album is different from what was heard in the
film. Elfman's own vocal contributions to the cue can be heard on the
album included as CD #2 in the 2011 set, "The Danny Elfman and Tim
Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box," along with all other unreleased
material missing from the Geffen product. On the set (which doesn't
include any Beetlejuice music on its other CDs), Elfman provides
the previous chronological presentation (minus the Belafonte songs)
followed by fifteen additional scores cues, four source pieces, and some
other miscellaneous, related music.

The 2011 set containing the 48-minute CD dedicated to
Beetlejuice is a disaster reviewed separately at Filmtracks,
though the music from this score on that product is by no means the
reason for its downfall (try a $500 price tag to start with). Like the
other scores on that set, Elfman chose to reprise the previous album
presentation and append the bonus tracks, failing to provide the
customary chronological order expected on expanded soundtrack albums.
The additional ten minutes of score is entertaining, but not substantial
enough when placed together in the bonus track section, even with cross
fades. The most significant additions are those that expand upon
Elfman's upbeat music for the main couple and the film's outdoors
scenes. Had Elfman sprinkled these cues throughout the rest of the
score, the overall presentation would have been far more appealing,
especially given how well the music directly reflects the narrative. The
same could be said of the original source pieces given that the score
jumps around so wildly anyway. The absence of the Belafonte songs (and,
to a lesser extent, Lydia's suicide note opera source) is truly
unfortunate here as well, for the same reason of narrative flow. The
"Animated Series" main theme (adapted by Elfman for the television
spin-off) and worktape demo of the film's titles are interesting, but
not worth repeat visits. There is a slight improvement in the sound
quality of the score on the 2011 set, and that aspect of
Beetlejuice has always remained another major detraction. The
piano is mixed heavily at the forefront, as it needs to be, but other
parts of the score are greatly hindered by an extremely dry and flat
recording. This uninspiring ambience betrays some of Elfman's
synthesized effects, especially the ghost effects in the opening titles.
Ironically, the best sound of the entire album exists in its opening
thirty seconds, during which Elfman dubs an echoing mix of a male choir
performing "Daylight come and me wanna go home" before the score's
primary rhythm gets started. The Belafonte songs feature, in many ways,
a more appropriate live mix than most of the score. While it could be
argued that the intimate recording plays well to the character action of
the film, it's hard to imagine that Beetlejuice would have been
any weaker if a larger ensemble and wetter mix had further enhanced the
fantasy elements of the story. Overall, though, the score remains a
devilishly enjoyable listening experience for fans of the film. Coming
when it did for Elfman, it can be affectionately referred to as the
"Handbook for the Recently Discovered Composer." If you're neither
enthusiastic about his career nor Burton's films, though, then this
score, despite its intelligence, could be extremely irritating. Nobody
can argue about its unique style; like the film, we haven't heard or
seen anything like it since. ****@Amazon.com: CD or
Download

Bias Check:

For Danny Elfman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.24
(in 72 reviews)and the average viewer rating is 3.21
(in 128,886 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

The insert of the 1988 Geffen album includes no extra information
about the score or film, but it did feature a funny advertisement for
products related to the film in early pressings. The 2011 Warner set
features some notes from Elfman about his choices of music for inclusion
on the product.